I’m just coming to the twelfth hour of feeling like myself again today, and it was blissful. For the past two nights I’ve gone back to sleep after waking early and distressed, and both nights I’ve dreamed for the first time in many months – that’s got to be a good sign! I woke this morning feeling rough and did good things anyway – gamed with my sister and had a hot cinnamon donut for breakfast. I can’t tell you how ridiculous and frustrating it is to be trapped inside a nervous system gone haywire, literally trembling and rocking with distress while doing something I really enjoy… That’s been my world lately, hours and hours of endless distress despite everything being well. But at about noon it switched off as suddenly and without tangible cause as it comes on, and the whole rest of today has been simply glorious.

Rose and I spent the day with friends, we had fun at a ball range practicing our baseball skills, had a picnic, watched movies, ate ice cream, played games, and had a great time. I am so relieved, it’s the most wonderful thing in the world just to feel like myself.

I feel so incredibly fortunate to have friends and family who are comfortable inviting me around and still including me despite the high chance of panic attacks and chronic distress at the moment. I feel so lucky and loved. I’m having to cancel a lot of things I want to do at the moment and I’m so grateful for people who get it and know that I’m not hiding behind anxiety as an excuse to get out of things, that if I say I wanted to come I really did want to be there.

The most terrifying thing about feeling this awful and out of control is my terror that maybe this is ‘me’ now, maybe this is what the rest of my life will be like. Today what helped was deciding that even if that was the case, I was still going to be part of life, to do my best to live a decent life; to be present, to care about people, to limp along as best I can however messed up and broken I feel. This thing that’s got me by the throat and is scaring me out of my mind is not going to win. I’ll fight every step of the way. How wonderful to be rewarded with so many hours in which breathing happened easily and without thought. Please let it happen again, often, please.